


Yenna

by Farla



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Content, Canon-Typical Racism, Childhood Trauma, De-aging, Dramatic Irony, Emotionally Competent Geralt, Gen, Ideation of Death/Suicide, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, Memory Loss, Miscommunication, Mistaken Identity, Oblivious Jaskier, POV Jaskier, POV Yennefer, Parent Jaskier, Post-Battle of Sodden Hill, Post-Episode: s01e08 Something More, Self-Esteem Issues, Slightly unreliable narrator, Young Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, btp, human jaskier, rbtf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23775073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farla/pseuds/Farla
Summary: Jaskier finds a girl in the woods near Sodden Hill. Not even his charisma seems up to the task of prying any explanation from her about where the rest of her family is or how she ended up on her own, but he's sure she'll warm up to him soon.Yennefer wakes up naked in the wrong country with someone looming over her.
Relationships: Geralt & Yennefer, Jaskier & Geralt, Jaskier & Yennefer, Triss Merigold & Yennefer
Comments: 194
Kudos: 258
Collections: Witcher Kink Meme (Dreamwidth)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Kink meme prompt](https://witcherkinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/429.html?thread=114349#cmt114349):  
> All Jaskier thinks about Yennefer is that she's terrifying and dangerous and powerful, and probably has been since the day she was born. So when something happens (curse? magic experiment gone wrong? Sodden Hill aftermath?) that replaces Yennefer with her teenage self from before she knew she could do magic, it'd never occur to him this cringing, timid kid has any connection to Yennefer. Even if she gives her real name he'd just think it was a funny coincidence and tell her about how he knows this other, very scary Yennefer who's just the worst person. Good thing she met up with someone nice like Jaskier instead!

Mystery Kid is still sitting at the far table when Jaskier finishes performing. That's good, not just for her sake but his given she's currently wearing his spare clothes and his cloak. She also looks like she's hoping she'll find a way to melt into the wall if only she flattens herself against the wood with enough determination, which is less so. She shivers, just once, when he slides in across from her, then goes stiff. Like a mouse cornered by a cat, holding still knowing it's caught but that moving will only provoke claws and teeth sooner.

Also like a mouse she's entirely willing to use her own claws and teeth, but she doesn't try to hit Jaskier again once he gets in range. He'll put that down as a win. "Still hungry?" he asks. It's meant to be a bit rhetorical since the bowl's been scraped clean of every grain of barley, but Mystery Kid shakes her head jerkily once. "Right, then." 

They're nothing alike, of course, the poor girl is terrified, but there's something in her stiffness that reminds him of Geralt sitting in a corner all those years ago.

"Not a fan of the songs?" They had been loud ones, the ones where you get people to sing the chorus with you. That'd certainly been the right move for the crowd as a whole, but when he brought her here, Mystery Kid seemed like she was giving serious thought to gracing him with actual eye contact and now she's decided she'll only be sharing such intimacy with her new best friend, the splintering corner of the table. All the shouting seems a likely culprit. She may not have been impressed with the content either. Young girls often liked the more complex narratives, in his experience, but drunken singalongs favored repetition and simplicity. He's guessing, of course. They're not even on a fake-name basis, he's certainly not going to try asking a lady her age. "I don't mind," he adds. "Really. What did you think?"

Her mouth moves a little and he wonders if she even can talk with her jaw so misaligned, then she says, quiet but surprisingly clearly, "Wasn't an army."

Well. That's a puzzler. "Wasn't an army?" he repeats. There very much was an army, or at least had been, but she did seem to have been clear of its actual path. Maybe she only saw whatever terrifying business the mages had been up to. Or maybe. Well. She'd been one child lost in the woods. It wouldn't take a whole army for whatever had ended with her naked and covered in mud. Oh, he is absolutely not qualified for this.

"In your song. The, the elves. There wasn't." The girl gulps. "An army."

"Oh!" he says. "You're a smart one, aren't you? You're completely right, I made it up. I wrote that song when I was first starting out. I didn't give a fig what was true back then, and what really happened with Geralt and the elves was not the sort of thing people look for in a song. I wanted something catchy and popular." He gives an embarrassed laugh. "And it was, and it made him popular too, so now I'm still singing it twenty years later." He plucks a few strings and she finally looks up just enough take in the lute at his side. 

"Lovely, isn't she?" He watches her hands lift a little, like she might reach out, and says, "You can touch if you want." But then he adds, "Got her from one of the elves then, actually," and she yanks her hands back into her lap.

So Mystery Kid is scared of elves too. Can't really blame her for that one. For all he knows elves killed her family before her eyes or something, and even if they didn't, everyone knows there's elves working with the Nilfgaard soldiers...the world's a messy place. There's a reason he never says anything as specific as Filavandrel's name when it comes to his lute.

"I promise, it's not cursed or anything like that," he tells her. "Won't bite," and gets back silence and her hands balling up even more tightly in her lap.

Right, yeah. Well, he thinks, looking to the emptied bowl again, at least feeding her had been the right move. That's most of dealing with kids, right? 

"So," he says, because that's a nice filler word. "So. Still can't say where your family is?" Shockingly, the question she wouldn't answer before gets no answer. "And I don't suppose you're up for explaining if that's don't know or don't remember?" It's not even an evocative silence. Sort of sullen, even. "Right. So." And no one here has recognized her so far when she is, to put it diplomatically, distinctive. To put it less diplomatically, she's so badly hunchbacked that silhouetted in poor light you wouldn't even know you were looking at a human. So she's not from here, or anywhere nearby either given he certainly hopes the locals would say something if they saw the girl from the village over suddenly alone in the company of a stranger and decidedly worse for wear. He's quite accostable. In fact, he regularly gets accosted even when he's doing nothing wrong. So it's shaping up to be his original guess, which, how lovely, is also the worst-case for them both. "Were you refugees?"

"No!" she shrieks, her head snapping up at last to show eyes bulging like a kicked dog's.

The tavern goes quiet for a moment and he can feel absolutely everyone staring at him. "Right," he says. "Right, yeah. Don't know what I was thinking. Of course not. Silly of me."

So that leaves...merchants of some kind?

His understanding of children more or less tops out at food and giving them back to their parents. There's also providing clothing and removing the dirt, but he thinks her heart might actually burst like a rabbit's if he makes any acknowledgement she has a physical form.

"I'm going to go talk to, er, her," he says, gesturing at the older barmaid, Adga, as if Mystery Kid's going to actually look up to see who he's pointing at. "I'll get you something to drink? Stay here and have something to drink." Food and water, he decides. He just has to think of this like dealing with a horse. A thing he is also not good at, but at least he's been around horses. Like with horses, he just has to manage the basics necessary to avoid death or laming until someone more qualified takes over again. 

Adga, for her part, is looking significantly less pleased to see him approach than she was earlier. He gives her his most apologetically pathetic look. "I was wondering if you could help me," he starts. "I found the girl in the woods this morning. She needs proper clothing and a bath, and perhaps for someone significantly more female than myself to handle that."

That gets Adga looking more invested in the whole business. She eyes Mystery Kid with a thoughtful frown. "Does she have a name?"

"Presumably," Jaskier says. "I'm also operating under the assumption she has a numerical age, some sort of origin, and other identifying traits."

Mystery Kid does not, to Jaskier's dismay, seem to appreciate Adga's interest much more than his, but the woman at least manages to exchange words without provoking another scream. It also turns out Mystery Kid was indeed in need of a drink, ultimately draining three mugs of watery ale before the bath is actually ready.

When Adga returns to invite her to the bath, it occurs to Jaskier that perhaps he should've asked for the watery ale to be watered down substantially more. The girl, already not the most coordinated, wobbles badly very badly when she stands up, and when Adga reaches out to steady her she jerks away with a squeak. Luckily Mystery Kid goes backward so instead of tumbling to the ground she only ends up sitting back heavily on the bench.

So she's scared of men, elvish lutes, and also women. With horses, you plop a blinder on them so they stop shying at literally everything. What's that for kids? A large doll? He's seen kids with their faces buried in a doll. Are dolls a thing you buy already made or do you have to commission them? 

"Easy there," the woman says. She keeps her hand outstretched and eventually Mystery Kid reaches forward and takes it. "There we go. There we go."

Jaskier watches them leave and contemplates if you can sort of...reverse sell children. That's basically what schooling is, right? Could he pay someone to take the kid? Perhaps more relevantly, does he have enough money on him? 

Not really an option right now regardless, he decides. The town's flooded with refugees and no one's going to want another kid around. And Nilfgaard may have been stopped but winning one battle doesn't mean the war's over. He certainly wishes things are turning around but if wishes were horses, he wouldn't have had to walk across the continent. Better to get Mystery Kid significantly north of here before doing anything else.

At least she's presentable once Adga's done. Mystery Kid's delivered to the door of his room in a rough dress and some disquietingly good leather boots. Mystery Kid herself looks about as dead on her feet as the corpse those shoes were probably taken off of and is easily herded over to the bed. She collapses without any further drama.

Adga jerks her head doorwise and he follows her out for a quick bit of whispering.

"She didn't even know she's in Sodden," Adga says.

"So she's from Cintra -" he starts, because things can get confusing when you're running.

"She's from Aedirn, she says. And had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned Nilfgaard. I think..." Adga bites her lip, glances at the closed door. "You can see what she looks like, and I don't think her mind is any better. She stares at things like she's never seen them before, the way babes do. I hate to say it but...perhaps there's more to this than bad luck."

Jaskier considers this. "If they didn't want her, surely they could've gotten rid of her before now," he argues. "I mean, I understand, but she's, what...twelve? Surely if they've taken care of her that long they wouldn't suddenly abandon her."

Adga shrugs, not looking at all convinced. "They wouldn't be the first to change their minds about that sort of thing when trouble arrived." At his expression, she adds, "Well. Could also have been a matter of not having the time to look for her when she got lost, or her slowing them down when they couldn't afford it, and they'll be glad enough to find she's survived and returned to them now that things have quieted, I suppose."

Mystery Kid, admittedly, was nearly as bad at walking as she was talking during the trip into town. If her family traveled she'd have to stay in the wagon. Jaskier supposes, with so much going wrong, a wheel could've broken, and they'd needed to run, and the girl just couldn't keep up... But wagons generally have horses hitched to them, or something ridable, and she's at least coordinated enough to stay put while something else does the walking.

If the girl hasn't put any of that together, Jaskier isn't going to bring it up. "Maybe they'll feel bad for leaving her," he says, starting to workshop possible arguments regarding familial obligation and general decency. "Welcome her back with open arms."

Adga nods at that. "People do things without thinking," she agrees. "There's a lot we do and regret afterward."

He flashes her a smile. "I am downright talented when it comes to making people regret things," Jaskier says, feeling on more solid ground for the first time all day. "That, I can handle."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate any and all sorts of comments. I think of writing as like a conversation and I welcome hearing people's thoughts whether they're positive or negative. Say literally whatever you feel like.


	2. Chapter 2

Jaskier is awoken in the far too early morning by Mystery Kid tripping over her feet (in the boots he just paid for) on her way to sneak out. That's gratitude for you. He rolls over to see her looking back toward him and then yanking her hand away from the door. They stare at each other.

"I wasn't," Mystery Kid claims at last.

He sits up. "Afraid it's a bit early for breakfast."

"I wasn't!"

"Right, yeah," he tries. "We'll have breakfast in a bit, alright? In the meantime - " She flinches. Isn't she going to get tired of that? Surely being terrified at every sound he makes has to be at least as exhausting on her end as his. At least she's managing to look at him now. He tries again, "So, Adga says you're from all the way over in Aedirn? That must've been an interesting trip."

Silence.

"I've traveled all over, myself," Jaskier continues, sitting up on the bed. "Might've passed through your home village at some point." He considers saying that he thinks he'd remember her, if he did, but under the circumstances that seems less like a bit of friendly flattery and more tactless. Besides, she's even scared of his lute, she'd probably refused to go out with her family any time there was bard playing and just stayed in the house. "Wherever that is," he adds, more pointedly.

"Gulet," the girl says abruptly. "I'm. I'm from Gulet."

Wonderful! "Gulet," he repeats enthusiastically. "Yes, I've been there." A much busier place than he can picture her in, but perhaps she lived on the very outskirts. Then, because he needs to address the topic somehow, "Quite a long way from there, aren't we?" She doesn't respond. "Long way, even as the crow flies. And the Mahakam mountain range," he adds as meaningfully as he can. Mystery Kid couldn't manage to walk over some planks to get out the door without stumbling. She'll never be climbing up and down even modest mountains. "You know, the mountain range between us and Aedirn. Have to go around all that first."

Gulet, Gulet... Lot of smithing there. Dwarves, too. He wonders if maybe dwarves haven't done anything to get on her evidently extensive shitlist, if maybe she'd be willing to say more than three words at a time to one. No, he can't see that. Dwarves can get loud and this girl, clearly, is the sort who prefers a life of whispers.

"Gulet," he says again. "Must be pretty busy there these days. Good place to visit again, hm? I imagine the demand for swords and daggers and all sorts of things has just skyrocketed, am I right? Real boon to the local economy." Which he supposes could be what her family was doing all the way over. Mystery Kid does not take this as an opening to elaborate on on the subject. But then, Mystery Kid apparently didn't notice she was three countries over, so who's to say she noticed anything going on at home either. "I don't think there's any weapons stock left unsold around here... They needed everything. Didn't even have enough fletching for their arrows, I heard." The girl continues to not participate in conversation. Which, well, he's pretty good at holding an entire conversation himself, if he must, but he actually needs to know some things here. "Your parents must be headed back, then. Is there anywhere you know they'll stop along the way? Or maybe they made plans about where people could meet back up, if they got separated?"

"They're not here," Mystery Kid says, which... Adga knew what she was talking about, it seems.

"They're not," Jaskier agrees. "Do you know where -"

"They're at home," Mystery Kid continues, starting to sound panicked. "I should be at home. I was - is this really Sodden?"

What's left of it, he almost says, but she's clearly got enough difficulty with what's going on without getting into the whole Nilfgaard disaster. "Right across the Yaruga river," he goes with.

"I was in the barn," she says, looking down so her floorboard audience can hear her better. "My father's barn. At home. I was there and - and then I was in woods. I thought I. That I hadn't remembered going."

"You mean, in Gulet?" he asks.

She nods.

"And you thought you... Has that happened to you? Not remembering?" Just stripping naked and running off into the forest? Just how much is wrong with this kid?

"Yes," she admits in a whisper.

"A lot?"

"J - just once. I... I thought... They -" She shakes her head. "B - but how can I be in another country? That's d - days."

He supposes that's an accurate statement if you consider that weeks do contain days. "Yeah," he says. "So, I would say then it must have been magic." That would explain everything, wouldn't it? Magic.

"Why would someone do that to me?" the girl asks, her voice cracking. She shakes and starts to sob.

"Hey, hey, no no -" Jaskier babbles, hopping out of bed. He pats her on the straighter shoulder - the other one is so twisted it hurts a little just to look at, and he's worried touching her could dislocate a joint or something. "I'm sure it was an accident. Nothing to do with you. There was a huge fight with a lot of mages and a lot of magic here. All that chaos being thrown around, it could've done all sorts of things. Just bad luck on your part, getting dragged into it, I'm sure. Just bad luck. Okay?" She quiets down, still sniffling a little. "Now, the sorceresses who are left are all rather occupied at the moment, but if we give them a few days, I'm sure I could convince them to take a look at you and -"

"No!" the girl yelps.

"I'm no fan of sorceresses either," he says, "I understand, completely understand wanting nothing to do with them - I want nothing to do with them - but -"

"I don't want to!"

"- they are dismayingly useful and if we can prove what happened to you is their fault -"

"I won't!"

"Alright, alright," Jaskier says quickly. "Right, you're right, no need to bother the scary witches, definitely not doing that, bad idea, you're right. We'll deal with this like regular human beings do, okay? No terrifying magic ladies and their terrifying portals." He waits to see if she'll calm down again. When it seems like she has, he continues, "Now, I'm a bard -"

"I know," she interrupts. Well, Mystery Kid hadn't had any reaction to being told she was in the company of the famous bard Jaskier the other five times he told her, so forgive him if he wasn't sure she was listening.

"Good," he goes with. "Well. I do quite a lot of traveling, and with the whole Nilfgaard affair as it is, I'm heading north myself." Is this too subtle? It's probably too subtle, yeah. "I'll take you with me and we'll travel up and over to Aedirn, drop you back off at your farm." This doesn't produce even more crying, at least. "Okay?" he prompts.

She nods. After a moment, "Okay."

Jaskier gives her his very most charming smile. "Wonderful. I'm sure we'll have a fun time of it. As I said, I'm Jaskier, also known as Julian Alfred Pankratz." She looks impressed at that, at least. Really, his noble surname is worth more than his continent-spanning fame as a bard? Kids these days have the worst priorities. "Now, since we're to be traveling companions, I don't suppose you could tell me your name? Only everyone's going to think quite poorly of me if I say I traveled all the way from Sodden to Aedirn with someone and don't even know her name, you see."

"Yennefer."

He doesn't mean to laugh, he really doesn't, but...of all the names to spring on him. He manages to stop while the girl still looks just startled and not upset and explains, "Sorry, it's only I know another Yennefer. A much worse one," he adds. "You're definitely the superior Yennefer. No, no, sincerely," he adds at the kid's dubious look. "The superior Yennefer, in every possible respect. So, so glad I woke up to see you and not her. Waking up to see her face was -" He shudders theatrically.

He had been considering at least talking to the mages but oh no, that's definitely not on the table now. Lilit only knows how Yennefer'd take hearing about this kid sharing her name - assuming Yennefer herself is not actually Lilit incarnated to fuck with people. Hadn't there been some old prophecy about that, bunch of evil girls all getting born at once that the sorcerers saved everyone from? Maybe they missed one. Yennefer probably wouldn't take it out on the kid directly, at least he'd hope not, even evil must draw the line somewhere, but being spared would be little comfort if the kid's parents end up turned into newts by an insane sorceress who's decided to take offense over her name being associated with anything less than perfect. "You know," he adds, "Other Yennefer - let's call her Worse Yennefer, just between us - was actually at the battle here! Funny coincidence. She absolutely wrecked the area, set fire to everything. A hero, they're saying. Which, if you'd met her, you'd know is nothing like Yennefer, so most likely she just showed up because she wanted a chance to burn everybody and it just happened to work out that everybody left by then was Nilfgaard. Or she killed Sodden people too and nobody wants to criticize that in case they're next. That's more likely, now that I say it." Indiscriminate spellcasting had been largely how the dragon hunt ended, as far as he could work out, so that was probably just Yennefer's normal contribution to anything she was involved with. "I suppose she might've been blackmailed into doing something helpful and good for the first time in her life, but really, I don't think even other mages would have the balls of steel that'd take. And I do mean you'd need balls of steel, given she is not above deciding to slice them off over nothing at all."

The girl just blinks at all that. Such a better Yennefer. Really, this Yennefer should be upset by Worse Yennefer prancing about ruining her perfectly good name. While he's not going near the mages with the kid around, he will definitely make sure to tell Worse Yennefer something of this next time their paths cross. Or, no, this is worthy of verse - and it has the added benefit of Jaskier not actually needing to be in newt-transforming range when she ends up hearing it. Really, the hardest bit will be trying to get a fresh spin on the well-known fact that sometimes people who are born beautiful are really the ugliest underneath and to be truthful, he's willing to be just a tad cliche if it makes for a better tune. Sometimes, what's really important is that your song be popular and catchy enough to travel to your target so they can hear it, and then keep hearing it enough to really _appreciate_ his lovely lyrics.

"Did she do that to you?" the girl asks.

"Hm?"

"Did she cut your balls off?"

"Certainly not!" Jaskier says. "I assure you everything is very much still there and in perfect working order. It was on the table, though. There was this whole thing with a djinn, and she _almost_ killed herself but unfortunately for everyone, before that could happen my least sensible friend decided to intervene because _apparently_ we couldn't just let that happen even though we very much could've, and so the world's still stuck with her and Geralt doesn't even have the decency to apologize to the rest of us for it. For a witcher Geralt is actually just incredibly bad when it comes to killing monsters. I mean, when he decides to kill them he does a good job of it, don't get me wrong, it's just other times he doesn't for all sorts of reasons, and _most_ of the time I can see his point, but her! Like we don't all know the real reason he's fucking her is because apparently if you spend all your time fighting monsters you start to think sleeping with them is a good way to spice things up in the bedroom."

Better Yennefer stands there, visibly processing this. Eventually, she comes back with, "Witchers can't kill sorcerers. Sorcerers made witchers."

Jaskier chuckles. "Really? Who told you that?"

"Everybody knows that," Better Yennefer insists. "The sorcerers made them out of dead men and demons."

Oh no, now it's less funny. "They are not," he corrects.

"They are."

"I actually know a witcher and I'm telling you, they are not. Witchers are made with potions." Jaskier's pretty sure that's the gist, anyway. "They're not demon-haunted corpses, they're mutants. Normal, alive, non-demon mutants." He spares a moment to be irritated about how it'd be a lot easier to defend Geralt if the guy wasn't unreasonably opposed to such conversational niceties as responding to questions people ask you. Next time he sees him Jaskier will point out that according to Better Yennefer, now people in Gulet think witchers are some sort of hellzombie - where had that even come from? - and how this kind of thing would be a lot easier to counter if some people would take their heads out of their asses long enough to explain how it actually worked instead of grunting about secrets and no longer mattering so some other people could write really great songs about it.

Actually… Jaskier might be able to use the kid as leverage to finally weasel that out of the guy. Geralt has no idea how to deal with children and this one is particularly talented at looking miserable, that's got to be worth a bedtime story or ten. Maybe he can even wrest some cute origin story out of Geralt about whatever he was getting up to at her age, before he became a witcher. Can she cry on command? Well, they can work on that if not, it's not that hard a skill.

"You know, little Yenna of Gulet, I think this is going to be a great trip for the both of us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of different maps of the Witcher. [I found this person's work to be the best and clearest, so I'm using it here.](https://atlasoficeandfireblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/a-map-of-the-witcher-series/)


	3. Chapter 3

Facts about Yenna the Better Yennefer:

1) Yup, she did indeed stare at absolutely everything and everyone in the market. Yup, that's probably not a good sign of her mental ability, but it's not causing any problems for Jaskier so he can probably just ignore it.

2) You'd think someone staring at absolutely everything would have an opinion on those things, but you would be wrong! She has an opinion on none of them. Possibly also a bad sign, but it certainly speeds up buying things.

3) This includes food. How can it include food? Jaskier doesn't know, but his attempts to call Yenna's bluff by giving her a bite of the various questionable biscuits and even more questionable dried meat being sold only resulted in her stuffing it in her face without hesitation.

She doesn't even think about it. He hands her something and it goes in her mouth despite the scrap of supposed meat being visually indistinguishable from boot leather. He's not sure what would happen if it actually was. She does have the sense to not eat non-food, right? Kids put all sorts of stuff in their mouth but if it's not food they spit it out. That's...he's pretty sure that's how it works. Reasonably. Maybe he shouldn't hand her anything that he doesn't want swallowed.

Jaskier, because he is a normal person, cares what he's eating, but there really isn't much. The market is pretty much what you'd expect: tons and tons of clothing and trinkets that, if they weren't stolen off the back of a dead person, were more or less stolen off the back of some desperate refugee, but when it comes to things everyone needs like food, everything's marked up like they're for a royal table and it's whatever could be yanked from the ground yesterday or dug from the very bottom of a forgotten barrel.

Heavy or mildewed, truly an intractable choice. It's enough to make someone decide they're best off accepting an empty stomach until the next inn.

He looks over Yenna, still gamely chewing at the meat. Children are basically like packmules that can complain in your own language, aren't they? Pack-goats? So maybe a tenth of her own weight? Though all the animals he's seen had straight spines and he would guess that is probably is a factor in how much weight you can pile on a back.

The one thing he's willing to credit Worse Yennefer for is that, probably by sheer accident of spite, she did turn the invading army into ashes and now people won't be quite so desperate. Things should clear up as time passes and they put distance between themselves and the current mess.

Until then, boot leather, hard pears, and radishes it is.

That turns out to be a good decision because Yenna does not make for a speedy travel companion and there's no way they're reaching the next inn before sundown. Not that Jaskier is particularly complaining. A slow pace has some benefits, like letting one compose without running out of breath, and Yenna makes for an attentive audience, if one that offers little feedback.

She doesn't recognize _anything_ he sings. He assumes there must be some songs she knows, you can't just not know songs, but she just gets a hunted look when he asks if she has any requests so he tells her to never mind and hands her a radish, which she eats from roottip to the very top of the greens like a hungry calf. His songs are better, anyway.

It all seems to be going fine except the next morning there's no sign of the girl.

It takes maybe an hour of traveling further on the road before he finds signs of something blundering off the path and there she is curled up in the new cloak he got her behind a rock.

"What was the plan here?" he asks and she flails awake. She looks significantly more terrified than he intended and he sighs. "It's not safe to be walking at night."

"I'm slow," she says.

"You'll be significantly slower once you break a leg stumbling about in the dark," Jaskier points out. "Or if some monster kills you. Few things make as poor travelers as corpses."

"I'm slowing you down."

"Luckily, I'm not in a rush. Come on, now."

It really is lucky because if he thought Yenna was slow before, Yenna with significantly less sleep could be outpaced by the average turtle. He's suspicious she's wrenched her ankle as well but it's hard to tell when her normal gait is already more of a broken-legged stagger.

The morning's songs are a collection he calls Ways Children Die Because They Didn't Do What They Were Told. Very popular with parents. Also very popular with children, because they are horrid little ghouls who delight in gore and have no concept of sympathy. He's not sure if she gets the point so after a bunch he brings up how commonly _forests_ and _night_ featured as prime dead children settings. Really makes you think, hm?

It doesn't appear to be making her think. She just stares at him. So he sings the one about elves snatching up runaway children and butchering them over a cookfire. It's a lengthy affair, terrifically detailed about each and every cut of meat getting carved off disobedient stupid kids and then eaten in front of their other captives. But Yenna, because she is as much a horrid little ghoul as all children, actually smiles, evidently so delighted to hear about gruesome horrors happening to people that she doesn't even remember she's scared of elves herself. Kids! They're awful.

"Oh, that song's a hit, huh? You spurn my lovely compositions and prefer that hack Eugen? Maybe I'll sing _nothing but Eugen's songs now_ ," he threatens.

"Are those ones true?"

Oh no. Parenting.

Does he lie and say that yes, absolutely if she runs off again the elves will take her so she better not cause any trouble?

Does he tell the truth and undermine the whole don't run off thing he's been -

"Wait. My songs are true!" Jaskier objects. "Way more true than anything Eugen wrote."

"That's not what you said."

"I said that about one song. One song!" he fumes. "I was eighteen. Everyone does something stupid at eighteen. You'll do something stupid thing when you're eighteen too, you know, mark my words, but if you're lucky it won't turn out to still be haunting you when you're forty. My songs are by and large accurate and well-researched accounts of real events, pried with great effort from the mouth of a real live witcher. The only time Eugen felt concerned about accuracy was when he was talking about the cuts of meat." Jaskier's used the lyrics as a mnemonic when going to the butcher's. Say what you will about Eugen's talent or subject matter or complete willingness to fan already raging flames, the man knew food.

Yenna looks disappointed to hear this because children are the real monsters.

"But it is true elves kidnap and kill people," Jaskier tells her, deciding that her not running off again is the side he should come down on. Yenna is clearly harmless, a little more elf-hatred isn't going to lead to anything actionable on her part. "I personally got kidnapped and almost killed by elves." Yeah, that perks her up, the little ghoul. "And there's all sorts of monsters around," Jaskier continues. "Forests are packed with child-killing monsters like towns are packed with people. And that's why it's bad to run off on your own, alright?"

Yenna nods.

They are in the next village for maybe an entire hour, Jaskier chatting people up and telling them about what happened at Sodden Hill - the official version, not what he told Yenna, because when terrifying witches tell you that they have decided who is getting credit for what you don't argue that there is no way Yennefer is a hero and if the woman hasn't shown up yet it's because she's still entertaining herself torturing stragglers to death or whatever she does to unwind - when someone interrupts him to tell him the deformed kid he brought has run off on her own.

Jaskier curses, thanks the man, curses again for good measure, and informs everyone within earshot that children are the worst and you can't even put a hobble on them because they've got the same thumbs you do. He's advised that it's best to beat the stupid out of them early and often before it gets them killed and he says if he tried beating the stupid out of Yenna he doesn't think there would be anything left.

One of the women laughs and says, "Yeah, she looked simple, the poor lamb. See about a hobble with a complicated knot, then."

Of course given Yenna's unhobbled speed it's unlikely adding a hobble would change anything. He catches up with her in ten minutes. "And what exactly were you thinking this time?" he demands.

Yenna stares at the dirt of the road.

"You don't even know where you're going!"

"I do," the girl says.

"Really."

"I do," she whines. "North past the mountains and east along the river."

"Do you have any idea how far that actually is," he says. When she just keeps staring at the ground he continues, "You'll be going through all of Temeria and into Redania first. And then the Dyfne river doesn't even take you all the way to Gulet."

"Okay."

"No!" he tells her. "Not okay! You didn't even have the sense to grab the food I have first! Have you even traveled before? Ever? Or did you spend your whole life in Gulet?"

Silence.

"Well?"

"No. I was born in Gulet," Yenna says eventually.

"Then if you ever want to get back there, stop running off," he says.

"Okay."

Oh, like Jaskier's that stupid. "You know, you're right. You clearly know what you're doing and I will not question your completely impeccable judgement. Setting out at noon with no food? A masterful plan, Yenna, I see it now. By all means, continue."


	4. Chapter 4

Yenna is pretty out of it by the time they reach the next outpost of civilization. It's almost like following up running away in the middle of the night with taking off again as soon as he stopped wasn't the best set of choices a kid could make. He gives her a shake as they approach the inn, expecting the smell of food and offer of supper to perk her up, but she doesn't react and when they stop at the counter she's swaying like she's going to fall asleep on top of it.

It makes Jaskier feel worse about spending the day pointedly eating the remaining pears in front of her but maybe now she'll finally understand that there's slightly more to her getting home than just doggedly walking in a direction and if she wants to live long enough to actually reach Gulet and her family she needs to stop running away from money and food and an adult who actually knows what he's doing.

So, room first. He orders a bunch of roasted potatoes as well, thinking maybe she'll wake up enough to eat later if she takes a nap now.

When they enter the room his eyes catch on the window and he takes a moment to point to it and tell Yenna that she will die if she jumps out. On the third repetition of this she nods, which doesn't really convince him she's hearing anything he's saying so Jaskier gets a rope and ties the shutters together. Hopefully that's enough of a complicated knot to discourage Yenna from making an even stupider decision than her other ones so far. She's currently trying and failing to remove her shoes so he figures she probably can't get up to too much trouble on her lonesome while Jaskier is downstairs.

Downstairs is a great improvement. The people there appreciate having Jaskier, famous bard and generally lovely, witty, charming person, around. Putting all of Sodden Hill into song is going to take a while but he's got some nice verses in the first draft already and once he's sufficiently entertained everyone with some of his well-polished existing repertoire the crowd is happy to take part in a bit of workshopping.

You see, there's just so much going on during the battle and so many different mages, and if maybe some parts aren't as clearly credited as others, well, that's hardly lying. Let's be real, there is no way she was there the whole time and then agreed to hold back and coordinate during the final battle, they either spent half the fight trying to convince her to help or she only showed up at the end and they're just saying otherwise to butter her up, so very possibly Jaskier's will end up the version that's closer to the truth.

Ugh, he could've gone his whole life without finding out that apparently even other sorceresses are scared of Yennefer. He thought she was just a terrifying freak by normal people standards.

He needs to make sure his newest masterpiece flows nicely and no one's getting confused and especially they're not getting confused in the sort of way where they mistakenly think there's any agenda in wholly artistic choices about ambiguity because he is so very attached to his penis and would like to stay that way forever. According to this test audience, what he's got so far is a rousing tale of numerous very heroic mages saving everyone. Some of them are even dead, Yennefer, and dead people get top billing and if you have a problem with that maybe you could've tried harder and gotten killed yourself.

"I heard Yennefer of Vengerberg was dead as well," says one of them, because apparently think of the devil and someone will bring her up. "The fifteenth death."

"Only fourteen mages died. The gods would never be so kind to me as to remove Yennefer from this world," Jaskier says. "Besides, my idiot friend bound their fates together. If it were anything serious Destiny would've ensured Geralt show up at the fight as well, yet no one around here saw hide nor hair of him - and I assure you, no one could miss either."

"The White Wolf!" a woman who's particularly drunk cheers, no doubt very proud she managed to follow the sentence well enough to work out what he meant, and Jaskier nods and replies, "The White Wolf indeed! Quite impossible to miss when he shows up."

Another man belches. "Bards. Of course you believe in fables, it's your trade."

"Ah, I myself once thought the same as you! Destiny, surely, was but yet another thing we made up in service of prettier songs. But if you'd seen what I have you'd know Destiny is very real and with the worst sense of humor. Yennefer is certainly still roaming the continent somewhere. Likely not even any worse for wear. If we're lucky, she got a taste for blood that last battle and headed south to find more poor Nilfgaardian bastards to burn, and neither of them will be our problem for some time."

Everyone's willing to drink to that fine future.

It's quite late when he goes back to the room. The pile of roasted potatoes looks the same as before, so he guesses she didn't wake up. Well, that's breakfast taken care of. Hopefully Yenna will at least have the sense to eat first if it's between her and the door out.

The next morning he finds her sitting on the floor by the bed. She's staring at the food, one leg stretched out suspiciously. As if, say, someone twisted an ankle and then spent the rest of the day walking on it and not saying anything.

"Go on, eat," he says, and goes to the window only to find that it's a lot harder to untie a knot than tie one. He spends a while cursing at it before finally sawing it off with a knife.

"That's wasteful," Yenna observes from the floor. He glances back to find she's suddenly learned manners and is painstakingly nibbling her way through the single potato half she took off the top.

She also hasn't stood up, just scooched across the floor so she can reach the plate on the table. "It's just some rope. How's the ankle?" he asks.

Yenna just stares at him.

"Yeah, I thought so. See, that's why we don't walk at night. And what possessed you to take off from a perfectly nice little village on a twisted ankle?"

She shoves the rest of the potato into her mouth and grabs two more chunks.

Ugh, kids. But in the light from the opened window her face is also the blotchy red of someone who's been crying.

"We'll stay here for the day or two so _you_ can stay off your ankle," he says, watching the next piece disappear fast enough he expects her to choke. "See, rushing and bad decisions just make things take longer for everyone. If you want to actually make it home you need to behave better."

She swallows thickly, then manages, "You could leave me."

"You have done a just appalling job of convincing me to do that."

"How come?"

Jaskier is never really at a loss for words, but words that are not wholly insensitive is a significantly higher bar. He runs through a variety before settling on, "If I'd left you to your own devices you would be dead in a ditch by now."

The girl scowls. "I would not." Note to self: songs about dead idiot children apparently too subtle for the idiot children who most need the message. Maybe he should make some verses designed to let you drop in names of differing lengths, really include the audience in the song.

"Do you understand that food is not just a nice thing to have because it makes your stomach feel better but you would literally die without it?"

"I'm not stupid," Yenna says, which is easily the stupidest thing she's said so far. She then follows it up with another strong contender: "And you wouldn't get in trouble if I did die."

He informs her, "As it happens, I do not make decisions based on if I'll get in trouble with someone. Never have, in fact. I have _decided_ that it would be morally wrong to leave you to discover if you'll manage to break your neck before you find a kikimora to eat you, because I have a responsibility to you as a fellow human being to help when you so obviously need it. You are welcome."

And apparently that finally gets through to her. She sags a little and drops her gaze to the floor. "Thank you. For helping me."

He beams. "There, that wasn't so hard. Now, let's see about that ankle."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: a doll is definitely all sorts of a solution


	5. Chapter 5

Yenna, for all the trouble she's been, turns out to be very good at living up to the ideal that children should be seen and not heard. Too good, honestly, as without hearing her it's pretty easy not to see her either and he keeps suddenly realizing that yeah, there's a kid sitting on the floor staring at him.

It is amazing just how distracting silence can be.

What do kids...do.

Well, he ran all over loud as a tomcat, to the frustration of the adults around him. Yenna can't move around well and isn't interested in opening her mouth again now that she's finished stuffing food into it. He also screwed around with whatever musical instruments he could get his little hands on, also not an option here given she thinks his lute is cursed by evil elves. He doubts she was even capable of learning letters, so books are out. He could try dropping her off in the kitchen, but what if she cuts a finger off?

"How are you at cooking?" he asks Yenna. "What kind of things did you help your mother with?"

"I didn't," Yenna says flatly.

Alright, so letting her near lunch ingredients will lead to everything getting seasoned with kid blood. Not his favorite flavoring.

Erm. Sewing…? If she can't be trusted chopping food with a knife she must be a disaster with a sewing needle, but even the worst sewer can't actually maim themselves with it. And while Jaskier sticks to repairs - a stitch in time to save nine, and all that, you have to pick up some basics if you want to keep your clothing from getting far beyond help while you're traipsing all across the land - there's also embroidery, which is a nigh-infinite time sink. You can always fit in another flower.

And girls love flowers.

"Right," he decides, pushing himself away from the table. "You know what's fun?"

Yenna looks decidedly put out, probably because she hates fun. Well. Jaskier has never let that stop him.

"What's your favorite flower?" he continues. He considers if he should add that this is a normal conversation and not some sort of trap like her expression suggests or if she'll just be contrary and take that to mean it absolutely is a trap.

"Linden," she says finally.

Those are just some tiny, messy white ones. Really, he wouldn't even know what they looked like if it wasn't for having them in tea…ah.

He chuckles. "I didn't mean to eat."

And that just makes her curl up a little.

"You must have ones you like to look at," he presses. "They're flowers."

"I don't want flowers," she tells the floorboards.

"Everyone likes flowers," he points out. "Even people who don't like flowers like _some_ flower. There's roses, obviously, the lovely tulips, carnations, daisies…"

"I don't!"

Kids! "Well, I suppose it wouldn't have to be any real flower anyway," he decides. Probably better, in fact, if they aim for something broadly flowery rather than find out that some detail of a particular flower turns out to be hard to replicate in thread. "Come over here."

She just glowers at him from her dark corner.

He points to where the sunlight coming through the window has puddled on the floor. "This needs light. Over here."

She hesitates. He waits. Eventually, she wriggles a few feet across the floor so she's somewhat near where he pointed.

He grabs her cloak and sits down on the floor as well. "I think it would be nice to have some flowers on this," he tells Yenna. "Do you know how to do that?" He pauses, then decides to take her silence as an answer. "Well! So, first…" Linden flowers are white, and if she's not going to give him a different answer or generally express any sort of preference, he'll start with that. He grabs the thread and needle.

He hasn't technically done this himself. But he's certainly seen plenty of the finished product, including how they looked unraveling when his clothing was torn in just the unluckiest spots, so he has some idea. And it's flowers. As long as it's roundish you can call it a flower. "So...so let's start by outlining a petal," he decides. "So here's a line, and then stitch back up, and we go across here in another line, and then back down, so it's a triangle."

"Petals aren't triangles."

"Shush. Now if I keep making these lines back and forth...see, the petal's filling in. Now you try."

She takes the needle as gingerly as if she's never touched one before but, to Jaskier's surprise and relief, doesn't stab herself on it immediately. That takes until she's actually doing her first stitch. And at least she doesn't whine. She just pops her finger into her mouth, her silence actually good for something. After a moment, she gets back to it.

He has successfully occupied the kid! Relieved, he stands and goes back to working on his lyrics.

When he glances back down he finds Yenna staring at the needle in one hand and thread in the other like she has no idea what to do now. She must not have the coordination to get the thread through the eye again. "Here," he says, holding out his hand. "I'll do it. Tell me if it comes loose again, alright? It's no problem."

She nods.

She also doesn't. He glances down and finds her having used up the first length of thread and trying to get more on from the spool. She's not making particular progress lining up needle with thread, just sort of mushing them together, but, he reflects, the real point is giving her something to do. At this rate occupying her all day won't even use up his supplies.

And if she doesn't need - or want, at least - his help… "I'm going to go out for a bit. Remember: stay put, and don't fall out the window. Got that?"

"Okay," Yenna says.

Once again, the people downstairs eating and drinking are actually happy to see him because he is actually a very wonderful person to see. He entertains them for a while, keeping half an eye for anyone trying to sneak down the stairs and half an ear for the thump-and-screaming he assumes would go with Yenna breaking all her bones jumping out the window. Neither happen.

So she's stayed put! Possibly because she's now crippled herself further but that certainly didn't stop her moving about yesterday, so Jaskier thinks what he's said actually sank in at last.

Which is excellent. And besides, everyone loves Jaskier, he's sure she's warmed up to him.

She is, however, still absurdly skittish, and might be startled into bolting by, well, apparently absolutely anything as far as Jaskier can tell. So: further bribery and distraction couldn't hurt.

He feels terribly validated when he returns late to find that yes, she's still there. Still on the floor, but she's lit a candle (All by herself! Good job, little Yenna!) and is picking away at the cloak by its light.

He smiles widely at her and drops the cloth puppet in her lap. She looks between him and the puppet. "A gift for you," he says, which only moves her expression from confused to something more stormy.

She touches it gingerly, much like she had the needle. "Why?"

"Does there really need to be a reason?" he tries to joke. She stares at him. Okay, apparently there very much does. "I thought you could use a friend."

After a moment she says, utterly deadpan, "Aren't you my friend."

"Yenna, I am hurt. Of course I am. And now so is this little baby...I suppose her name is up to you? His name?"

Yenna makes a point of pulling up the doll's shift as if she expects to find genitalia on a children's toy. "It's an it," she tells him, then continues, "That's fatal, you know." Which, she said something about a farm? Was that something that happened with calves? Ugh, farming is terrible. Then again, veal is delicious and would certainly make for one tasty silver lining if it came to that.

"I don't think it's supposed to be that literal," he tells her. She doesn't seem particularly thrown by this and it occurs to him that she may just be being annoying, though he can't imagine why anyone would feel the need to be difficult over this. "Look, cloth puppets are like, they're like fish, alright, they live happy cloth lives without needing those parts. And he or she is going to need a name for that long and happy life."

Yenna picks it up and considers it. "[Dacy.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_dace)"

"What a lovely, lovely name," he assures her. Is that a girl's name or a boy's? Is she going to be upset if he asks?

She looks between Dacy and him. "What else do I have to do?"

"You just...play with it?" Jaskier says, feeling more than a little helpless. "Er, you can pretend it's a baby? Sort of practice, for when you end up having real ones?"

"I'm not going to," Yenna hisses, suddenly all teeth.

"I mean, no, of course, you're a kid, you're what, twelve…?" She now looks both angry and insulted. "Not twelve?" Not like it particularly matters in her case.

"Fourteen."

So he more or less guessed it. "Right, so not anytime soon." One of life's little mercies for the commoners, at least they weren't getting married off at first blood. "It's like, um, you've held babies before, right?"

"Yes."

"So you pretend the puppet is the baby and you take care of them the same way."

"I didn't take care of them," Yenna says stubbornly. Which he supposes he should've seen coming as he too would not want to leave an actual live baby in Yenna's dubious grasp for very long.

"Just do what you did with the baby, okay?"

Yenna is now quite over that early aversion to eye contact and gives him a sustained stare in a very, very creepy way. Then she crooks one arm and nestles the puppet there, exactly like she's holding an infant. Okay! So she does know something about babies, at least. "Like I did with the babies," Yenna says slowly. "I should do that. That's what you want."

"Yes," he says, and goes to sleep foolishly thinking he's gotten through the whole affair.

He's woken in the morning by smoke and opens his eyes to find Yenna staring into the fire as the puppet smolders.


	6. Chapter 6

He yanks the puppet from the fire first, before it starts to really smoke and choke them both. Yenna has her arms tight across her chest and knees raised, looking she expects to be hit but with her expression determinedly unrepentant, which would maybe be an improvement on trembling terror if it wasn't for the whole context.

"Right," he says slowly. "I suppose I'm meant to ask you why you did that." Yenna continues to just glare at him. "Yenna, you can't burn things because you're mad," he says.

"You _said_ you _wanted_ -" she starts and ugh kids.

"This isn't how you play, Yenna. Nobody burns babies."

"Do in the winter," she retorts. "When the ground's hard. What - what would you know."

"Well, it's not winter."

"Well, you won't let me leave so I can't dig a hole."

Why is he arguing about the best way to dispose of dead baby effigies? How did this happen? "You don't need to do anything. I told you, the puppet's lack of a tiny cloth dick is fine for puppets. It would, in actual fact, be horrendously creepy if one was sewn on. Now, can we play the game properly, in a way where we don't immediately decide the baby is dead."

"So how long do I have to wait first?"

"You're doing this on purpose."

Yenna rolls her eyes, and Jaskier feels somewhat like she's called his bluff because yes, Yenna, apparently he doesn't know what to do if she's deliberately winding him up about insisting any imaginary adventures with a toy involve death and burial. Why would he! Is this something parents normally have to deal with? _He_ was not this morbid as a child. He hopes his own parents know how lucky they apparently were.

He sighs and sits down next to her. He holds up the puppet. "Look. A nice, friendly, healthy -"

"Is not," Yenna says.

"Okay," he tries. "Why not?" He wiggles it. "Why, they've even got such a healthy glow to them."

"Fever."

"Maybe it could not be fever."

"If I have the baby then it's fever," Yenna declares.

"Well, right now _I_ have the baby and I say it's not fever."

"Fine, it's yours."

"Lovely, happy, healthy Dacy," Jaskier says. He bobs the toy up and down. "Would you like to hold _perfectly fine and happy_ Dacy now?"

Yenna's arms remain crossed and behind her legs. "I can't."

"Sure you can." He balances it on her raised knees.

Yenna says, "This is dumb," and shifts so it topples headfirst to the floor.

He picks it up again. "You shouldn't be mean to Dacy," he tells her. She turns to stare at the fire and keeps scowling. "I'm sure you can be nice," Jaskier tries, in defiance of all actual evidence he's seen. No response.

It's not that Jaskier doesn't _know_ that sometimes the best way to get someone to talk is to be quiet and let the silence stretch. It's just that Jaskier is always the someone. "So, how about your real siblings? I was an only child myself, which was just dreadfully boring. How many do you have?"

"Four."

"You must miss them a lot," he says.

"Yes," Yenna mumbles.

"So… which ones were older and which ones were younger?"

"I'm the oldest."

He was kind of fishing for names or really any sort of traits but there is no statement so vague that Jaskier can't keep a conversation going. "Aw, so you're the big sister."

"Yes," she mumbles.

Oh, nice show Yenna, but Jaskier is experienced with people who don't even reliably give you a whole word as a response. "Who w- who _is_ your favorite one?"

"Eike," she says.

When she doesn't elaborate, he asks, "And what do you like best about them?"

"Eike tries to get out of doing chores the most," Yenna says, which is not something Jaskier ever thought endeared you to siblings, but what would he know? Yenna's certainly an ongoing trial to deal with, maybe like calls to like. "And never to go anywhere else, he's just lazy. So he'll stay with me because I'll say I don't know where he is when our father asks."

Jaskier idly bobs Dacy up and down. "Okay," he says, "so what if Dacy is like Eike was when he was little?" Instead of a corpse. Jaskier really wants to move away from cloth puppets being baby corpses. "Was he a little layabout even as a baby or did he have to grow into it?"

"You don't know anything," Yenna says to the fire, and her voice is starting to quaver. Of course! What won't she cry over!

"I don't," he agrees quickly, then tries, "That's one of things I like about traveling, you know, I can meet all sorts of people who do know things and listen to them."

"I don't want to have to tell you things to make you stop I just want you to stop!"

Alright, he...he may be out of his depth here. She'd said to stop so he tries, very valiantly, to do that, only then she starts to actually cry and - "I'm sorry. I - really, I didn't mean to upset you."

She sniffles and rubs at her face. "You don't know anything," she says again. "I'm c- it's bad luck. Me. Touching them or s-seeing them."

"You know that's not, it isn't catching -"

"I know!" she hisses at him, like she's only angrier he pointed it out. "How could I not know, I was born like this!"

After a moment, he tries to continue, "So…" and then trails off again. _I'm sorry_ does not seem like it'll be well received.

Yenna buries her face in her knees. Muffled to the point she's barely audible, she says, "If one got real sick and had to be out of the house so nobody else got sick. Then I got them. I didn't take care of them or anything. I just. Waited."

That's...something, and likely to only get worse if he asks for more details. "Well, you'll have some of your own one day, though," Jaskier suggests.

"Won't."

"Oh, I'm sure there's someone who'll -"

"I'll drink stuff to kill it like my mother does," Yenna says into her knees. "Why should there be anybody more like me? I shouldn't have been born either."

"Did your mother say that to you?" he asks, horrified.

"She's a good liar," Yenna says, and she sounds almost proud of this awful woman.

For once, Jaskier really finds himself without any words. "Well," he says at last, "how about some breakfast. We'll need full bellies for all the walking we need to do." Though he's really starting to wonder why she's in such a hurry to get back.


	7. Chapter 7

There's a man wearing a string of ears.

She's.

Always moving too much when she shouldn't but dumb and stuttering at the worst times, stuck in place like she's knee-deep in mud, looking. Jaskier shifts in the corner of her eye, he's beside her and it's. Too late. Seen what she was staring at. Seen her staring. She only had to not look eyes down a stupid idiot who never notices anything but she didn't.

Wrong through her jaw and up her spine.

"G - go - ood," she chokes out. The ears end in points. She has to say so if she sees that because everyone says so when they see that. When they see a hero.

"Hm," Jaskier says, not sounding impressed.

Why would he be, she can't. Can't get just one word out of her mouth. 

Only way she was ever lucky only part of her that's shaped like it should she only has to say the words right to sound like they do but. Never can do anything right. 

(she wants her mother her mother would know what to do her mother would know what to say her mother would make excuses for her her mother would)


	8. Chapter 8

Jaskier pauses at the sight of at a patch of what he's pretty sure is false nightshade berries. Almost entirely definitely pretty sure.

"Hey, little Yenna!" he says, and points at the plants. "What would you say these look like?" Now, yes, it's Yenna, but, she's a farm brat, right? This kind of thing isn't even knowledge for them, they're basically born with it. And he has on a lot of good authorities that plants are "not that hard", and he usually gets it right himself, almost always, really...

Yenna stares at him.

"Well?"

She stares at where he's pointing. "Plants," she says finally.

"Right, yeah," Jaskier says. "What kind of plant, though?"

She looks between him and the maybe false nightshade.

"False nightshade, do you think?" he presses.

"I don't know."

"They look a lot like false nightshade, I think."

"Uh-huh," she says finally.

"So you agree?"

"I don't know," Yenna repeats.

"Really?" he says, a bit plaintively. "I'm pretty sure… They look like false nightshade, don't they?" False nightshade berries are delicious, is the thing, so he'd really like to eat some, but only so long as they're actually false nightshade and not, you know, going to kill you by being real nightshade.

"Why should I know if you don't know either!" she shouts, and then she flinches and curls in on herself, her eyes screwed shut.

"Right, alright, yeah," he stammers. "That's, yeah, good point, yeah." You'd think the part where he wasn't hitting her would mean she stopped standing like he was going to hit her but no, of course nothing is that easy with Yenna.

Well, he'll just have to wait for her to relax again as they walk.

"- naught but bad luck, to fuck with a puck! Lest your grandkid be born, a hairy young faun!" Jaskier sings, glancing over yet again to Yenna to see if she's in a better mood.

She glares back at him and spits suddenly, "I hate you and I hate your songs." Still cranky about the berries, then. She can really hold a grudge.

"That is hurtful, Yenna," he tells her. "Deeply hurtful. Well, if you're in the mood for critiquing…" And he starts in on his Sodden Hill work again, which he thinks is really coming together nicely.

Yenna does not seem to have anything to say about that. He has plenty of thoughts of his own, so when he finishes his current sketch he returns to the start and begins playing around with each verse, feeling out the way the words fit together and trying out different variations.

He's so caught up in whether or not he can get a bit of wordplay with _saprophytic_ and _sappic_ without spending too much space explaining it that he's completely forgotten she's there once again and is taken by surprise when she says suddenly, "Why do you hate mages so much?"

"I don't." When she doesn't respond, he says, "Why do you think I hate mages?"

"Your song's all about the dead ones," Yenna says.

So he is getting far too blatant about that if even Yenna’s noticed. Yeesh, and here he thought he was still solidly in the realm of subtle and subtext.

"Like you're only willing to say nice things because you're so glad they're dead. And you're mad your friend doesn't kill the one who has the same name as me."

"I hate Worse Yennefer because she is just a genuinely awful person with no redeeming traits whatsoever," Jaskier explains. "She doesn't even have any reason to be awful, she's just the sort who always got everything as soon as she wanted it and ends up rotten from it. But mages are just, you know, people. Individuals. I would never hate someone for what they are, I hate people for who they are. For example, who Worse Yennefer is is an awful and terrifying creature who uses her admittedly vast power to make everyone around her miserable and her also admittedly vast tits to confuse people about cause and effect. The thing is, the living mages all say Worse Yennefer saved the day so I can't make any of them the hero of the hour. But! I can valorize dead people without any problem, you see. Worse Yennefer is many things but even she can't bully the dead into contradicting me." At least, so far as he knows. It's a gamble he's willing to take.

"Are all your songs lies?" Yenna doesn't even do him the credit of sounding disapproving.

"Oh, it's not even lying. The mages told me what happened and who did what, at least as much as the non-Yennefer survivors could work out. I'm not making anything up, I'm just choosing where the focus goes. Also, they're terrified of Worse Yennefer so you'll forgive me if I take their claims about her with a grain of salt."

Yenna snorts. "Mages aren't scared of anything."

"Yes, well, I might've agreed with you before I saw one of them, this perfectly nice woman Triss, falling into tears because she had no idea where Worse Yennefer had disappeared to. Which I completely sympathize with! The fact Worse Yennefer could be lurking absolutely anywhere is a chill down my spine as well, and unlike those poor mages who no doubt are harassed by her constantly, at least I'm blessed enough that our paths only ever cross when I'm traveling with Geralt." Ah, right, and there's still that plan to enact. "Say... Do you like songs to be true?" he asks.

She considers this. After a while, she says, "I guess."

"Would you like to help me find out some true things?"

She deliberates over this like he asked her the secret of life. Eventually, and without a trace of the enthusiasm he was aiming for, she replies, "Maybe."

"Great!" he says. "So, my witcher friend Geralt, from all those songs, the ones which are very nearly all entirely true thank you. I _know_ he's around here." Details had been sparse beyond that he'd been in Sodden, but given Geralt certainly went nowhere near Cintra and generally avoided everything to do with armies, he had to have gone north, same as them. "I'm not sure exactly where, but we should cross paths with him before long."

Yenna does not look pleased about this at all.

"I assure you, he doesn't bite. You may have heard some talk of him being the Butcher of Blaviken -"

"I hadn't."

"Forget I said that, then!" Jaskier says quickly. "My point is, whatever bad things you've heard about him or witchers from other people isn't true. What I say about him is true, because I actually know him, and I say he's a hero and a friend of humanity. Alright?"

"Okay."

"Is that a _I heard you say that_ okay or a _I'm convinced_ okay?"

"I believe you," the girl says. "Witchers work for humans. Everybody knows that."

"Exactly, good. Now, the thing about Geralt is he'll butt in about the truth and people being wrong on all sorts of subjects, but you try asking him anything about himself and he'll say any old thing to end the conversation. Very frustrating! But I've found he's not as good at making things up about himself, especially when you get him off-balance. So, my thinking is, if we say you're very sad and need to be distracted with stories about him, whatever comes out of his mouth next will probably be a real tale."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because he has the spine of a lamprey," Jaskier says.

"But those haven't got - oh."

"Exactly!" Jaskier says, clapping his hands. "Also, he can't handle being around children at all and we can use that. Now," Jaskier continues, "are you any good at crying? There is a lot I haven't gotten out of him and you can't just shove onion in your face, that doesn't fool him." Apparently the tears smell different, although given Geralt's bizarre and hypocritical relationship with the truth, Jaskier suspects Geralt smells the onion itself and just lied to Jaskier about the details.

"I don't think people like crying."

Jaskier nods. "People will do anything to make crying stop. So then I tell him that, as a child expert, I know you'll stop crying if he tells you something about his own childhood. You know, what was he getting up to at fourteen, back when he was a regular human kid himself just like you. It'll really humanize him, I think. I will even credit you," he continues generously. "You can be a character in the songs too! A nice little frame to connect however many stories we can wiggle out of him."

"Okay," she agrees.

This time, instead of trying to run for it Yenna wedges herself in the deepest corner of the stables. Jaskier finds her after hours and pries her loose, absolutely coated in muck.

"You _want_ to go home," he reminds her. "Is a pile of horseshit home? No."

"I'm filthy," she observes.

"Yes, well, in their gracious wisdom the gods made water and man made soap," Jaskier says and dumps a bucket over her.

Gods above and below, children. Really makes Jaskier wish he'd run across Geralt already, because he could have used a witcher to track her down.


	9. Chapter 9

And then, _finally_ , while making their way through a decidedly less than maintained forest road, Jaskier runs across Geralt. Or, well, Roach runs across them.

"Geralt!"

Geralt's expression brings to mind an elk that's just taken an arrow between the eyes. He nearly falls out of the saddle in his rush to dismount - what was he even doing riding Roach on such poor ground, it's not like he's hurrying anywhere, moving on your own schedule is one of the few benefits of being a wandering monster hunter - and then, without so much as a hello, beelines for Yenna.

"Yen," he says.

"Oh sweet Melitele," Jaskier curses, "you know this one too? Did you entangle yourself with every last Yennefer on the Continent or did you at least limit yourself to just the ones from Aedirn?"

Yenna, being, well, Yenna, has reacted to being charged by a witcher by freezing in place and screwing her eyes shut. Honestly that's pretty good by her standards. Geralt stares at her and Jaskier considers that he probably didn't need that discussion about faking tears because Yenna's about to burst into very real ones.

"Yen?"

"And since when do you act like - like this -" Jaskier gestures at Geralt's entire witchery looming and sudden complete disregard for personal space. Yenna has used up whatever very paltry store of courage she has and begun to shake. "Honestly. At least take a step back and give her room to breathe. So, this is Yenna, who apparently you met at some point, or maybe you didn't, you're the djinn expert, what would I know about how your bad decision worked out. We're headed to Gulet, get her back to her parents -"

" _Gulet?_ " Geralt says, and yes Geralt, he knows it's a long way, he's quite familiar with traveling by now. "That's not -"

"I lied," Yenna blurts out. "They're not. They're not really my parents. My real mother's dead."

"Uh," Jaskier says. "Alright. That's - alright. But anyway, so -"

"She's not my real mother. She. She didn't know, none of them know."

Geralt, for whatever reason, grabs one of Yenna's arms and pulls back the sleeve to look at her wrist, because apparently Geralt has entirely forgotten how to interact with human beings since last Jaskier saw him. Has he stopped sleeping again or something? He doesn't look quite that bad.

"My real mother's dead, they killed her already, _I swear!_ "

"That's -" Jaskier starts, and is saved from having to figure out what he was going to say next by Geralt rounding on him, grabbing him by the arm, and dragging him away from Yenna.

"What the fuck did you tell her?" Geralt yell-hisses in his ear.

"What did I tell her?" Jaskier retorts, pulling his shoulder free because he needs both arms free for gesturing if there's even a hope of expressing just how outrageous this is. " _What did I tell her?_ Me? You nearly tackle some kid and you think she's scared because of something I did?"

"Jaskier!"

"I have been doing nothing wrong, like always, and have been tirelessly working to improve your reputation, you know she told me she'd heard witchers were corpses raised into service by sorcerers -" And that, at least, gets some sort of flicker of startled recognition breaking through Geralt's scowl, so apparently he's heard such nonsense before even if it's new to Jaskier. "Right, yeah, exactly, so you're familiar with what I'm working with, and you, you _boar_ , you just _barrel in_ like -"

Roach doesn't even have the grace to nicker. There's just the sudden clop clop clopclopclopclopclop of her hooves picking up speed.

As one, Jaskier and Geralt turn around to watch Roach and Yenna disappearing.

"And would it kill you," Jaskier continues, "to learn how to train a horse not to let _literally anyone_ steal her? How many times has this happened now, Geralt? Because by my count that's the sixth time just while I've been around, six times, and do you know how often I've seen this happen to anyone else, _never_ , that's right, _no one else_ , yet _two_ of your horses _in a row_ haven't the sense -"

"Shut up, Jaskier."


	10. Chapter 10

There is something, Yennefer decides, about knowing there are no good choices left to you. There have probably never been any good choices but at least here she knows there's nothing else she could do so she doesn't have to worry she picked wrong. What happens next isn't her fault, or at least isn't more her fault than usual.

Keeping the horse means the witcher is sure to chase her because he'll want the horse back. But if she leaves the horse, chasing her will be that much easier, so he's sure to chase her, and she'll still have stolen from him so he's sure to chase her, so she might as well keep the horse.

Everything narrows down to this: she can make herself trouble. She dropped almost everything the horse had, so he doesn't need to chase her, not actually. It probably won't help, taking nothing but the clothes she wore didn't let her get away from Jaskier, but it means he doesn't need to. Now either she stays ahead long enough he stops wanting to bother with her or she doesn't and at least she made things difficult first.

It's not the witcher who finds her as night comes to an end, though.

She yelps, scuttles backward - as if that works, as if that ever worked, as if there's anything she can do to protect herself.

"I uh," Jaskier says. He's angry again. "Right, sorry. Uh. We need to talk."

"Please let me go," she begs.

"We _really_ need to talk."

"Please just let me go."

"Yenna - nefer," he says, stumbling on her name. That's bad. But he's still using a name for her. "You, er, you remember I said I knew someone else called Yennefer? A sorceress Yennefer?"

"Yes," she says. She does not have an opinion on that. She has spent the days working very hard at not having an opinion on that, on not thinking at all about the things it can mean when a man wants a woman dead.

It didn't do any good. Nothing she did was any good. Nothing saved her from ending up here.

"Well, uh, that. Is, um. Well. I said some things I probably, I definitely should not have. Which I am very sorry about saying. Incredibly sorry."

She's going to die.

"I just think before we continue I should make it clear I said those things without thinking, and it's really not how I actually feel, okay?"

She doesn't say anything. Pretending to agree with him won't do her any good by this point.

"I mean, yes, alright, kind of, but I didn't mean anything by it, you understand? It was venting. Nothing I said was ever going to change Geralt's mind, or just, matter, generally, so I didn't really think about it. I don't really think about anything I'm saying most of the time..." He trails off, then sighs. "That sorceress. She's, uh, her name's Yennefer of Vengerberg."

It can always get worse.

"You think I'm her," Yennefer says numbly. "The woman you want to kill."

"No! I mean, yes, about you being her, but I don't want to kill you, obviously I don't want to kill you, I've been doing my best to keep you alive -"

"Because you didn't think I was her. Now you do."

"I don't kill people," Jaskier claims. "I shouldn't have said all that stuff and I didn't really mean it and it was really wrong of me, and also I don't kill anybody."

She shudders. "He's the one who does."

"I told you, he isn't like that."

Maybe it's better if it's the witcher. Witchers know how to kill things. He could make it quick. "That's what you wanted, for him to do it. Now he will."

"No one is killing you," Jaskier insists.

She wonders suddenly if the witcher hasn't told him what she is. "Then let me go. You're not scared of him" - Yennefer doesn't care if that's a mistake, doesn't care what the witcher might do to him - "so don't tell him. You - you don't want anything to do with her, and you don't want her to have anything to do with him, I promise if you let me go you won't ever see me again."

"Well, yes," Jaskier says, "because you'll actually end up dead if you do that."

No one will help without knowing why and no one will help if they know and she's stupid as everyone says to keep asking as if it'd ever be different.

"You even dumped his saddlebags with the food and the money and all his expensive weapons you could've sold off for more money. You are astoundingly bad at staying alive."

So the witcher did have enough he wouldn't notice a small one missing.

Or maybe he doesn't care. Or maybe he didn't say. Maybe he thinks...maybe he expects her to put up a fight.

Maybe he likes it better that way.

Jaskier continues, "How many dead children in forests do you need to hear about before you notice a common theme?"

"Your songs aren't real," Yennefer says. Her eyes burn. "I wish they were. I wish there were murdering elves butchering children and I wish they'd kill me instead!" At least they'd have a good reason. If there were any elves they'd kill her for being human.

Jaskier just sighs. "I'm starting to think I should've realized you're the same person before now by the amount of headache."

"I'm not her."

"Geralt would know. That's, apparently he made some sort of deal with the other sorceresses, you remember I said they didn't know where Yennefer went? So there's, Geralt, there's this whole destiny thing between the two of you, and I guess you told the other sorceresses, or, um, possibly Geralt did, I don't know, he didn't explain that part on the w- uh, my point is Triss, I told you about Triss right?" He waits as if he wants a response.

"The sapphic one in your song."

He looks like he doesn't like the answer. "Do, er, do you know what that word means?"

She shakes her head. Something to do with scared, probably, since it'd had to do with the other Yennefer. If she wasn't supposed to hear the song why'd he keep singing it?

"Whew," he says. "Right, yeah, so, yeah that one, but also that doesn't mean anything and you should just forget you heard that. So, so Triss, she wanted to find you but she found Geralt and she was hoping fate would make him trip over you, so they, well, let's say traded responsibilities, and, that worked out it seems! So, uh, yeah. I know that's probably a lot to take in but...yeah. And, just in my defense while I had heard talk sorceress magically, uh, prettied themselves up, you changed more than, than the obvious." He gestures at her. "You, um, changed a lot, it turns out."

"I didn't," Yennefer says helplessly. "Because I'm not her." And she starts to cry because she realizes, "If he thinks I'm her then he thinks I tricked him. That - that he -"

How much worse would it be, if he thought he'd been tricked into sex with a thing like her? What would he do to her?

"Oh! That's - okay, let's just take a minute here," Jaskier says, voice rising. "Where'd - from his things, right, well, I really think money would have been a much better choice than a knife, that knife you're got there on the right, your right my left definitely a knife right there in your right hand."

It's going to hurt but whatever an angry witcher will do is going to hurt more.

Jaskier lunges toward her and then someone else's hand clamps around her fingers cold and unbreakable as iron. She screams and thrashes and then he isn't holding her and she isn't holding the knife and there's only a trickle of wetness down her throat not deep enough by half she should have done it earlier she should have known there was never any chance of her escaping.

Even her father's never looked so angry as the witcher does now.

She curls up on the ground. Jaskier curses. The witcher is quiet, which is even worse.

"Well!" Jaskier says, sounding breathless. "Don't think anyone could've predicted Yennefer'd ever do that."

"Jaskier, you saw her naked," the witcher growls. "If you'd been able to tear your eyes from her tits -"

"I did! To look, respectfully, at her _face_ which is why I realized I needed to get the hell out of there, thank you! I have not dared look anywhere else since lest I miss the split second warning that is all I would get before she turned me into a pillar of salt!"

"Jaskier!"

"Sorry! Sorry, I know, sorry, shutting up. Shutting up now."

Then they're both silent.

The witcher says, "Yen."

"I'm not whoever you think I am," she repeats. The unfairness of it chokes her. She sits up and stares at them and if there's nothing she can do to stop this from happening then it doesn't matter what she does do so she shouts, "I'm not her! If she was me, if I was ever a sorceress, I hate you and I'd have killed you both whenever she met you and then you couldn't kill me now because you'd be dead already!"

"Yenna!" Jaskier yells at her. "That's a horrible thing to say!"

"Why! Why is it right when you kill people, why do you get to!" she wails.

"No one is killing anyone why is everything always about death with you!" Jaskier shouts back.

And then she's just waiting, because the knife is gone and she's slower than either of them and she's not going to get another chance at the horse. Not that it would do her any good, would it? He's a witcher. She's so stupid. She deserves this for being so stupid.

"Elves butchering children," the witcher says at last with a sigh. "Really, Jaskier, that one?"

"I am well aware of your opinion on the song, which I remind you I didn't even write, but I was _trying_ to get her to stop running off. Not everyone has a scenthound stuffed into their skull. She didn't care a wit about any other monsters but she's so scared of elves she thinks my lute might bite her and sometimes you have to make compromises! It didn't even work anyway!"

"Can't imagine why."

"Yes, yes, apparently she'd love to be turned into cutlets, _how was I possibly supposed to guess that?_ "

"And you thought to impress her by saying I kill elves for fun," the witcher says.

"No," Jasker says.

"You're a witcher. You kill things for money. Coin to bards for singing, coin to witchers for killing," she spits. It doesn't matter anymore, whether she keeps quiet or not.

"This is what I meant, Jaskier," the witcher growls.

"It's a great song and you do kill things for money which is a valuable service and people should appreciate it more. Anyway, she didn't believe that one either."

"Of course she didn't."

"Yes! So if it turns out she knew there was no devil-led elf army for you to fight then what's the harm singing about one!"

The witcher makes an angry sound. Yennefer can't understand how the man just stands there like he's not afraid at all but maybe he hasn't got to be afraid, maybe he knows he's not the one that anger will turn on.

The witcher looks at her again. He sighs. He crouches down in front of her so they're closer to eye level.

It doesn't make anything better.

"You don't have to be upset, because the woman wasn't me," she pleads. "You didn't get tricked." She just wants this to be over. If the best she gets is dying quick then she'll take it, she'll stop asking for more.

He shakes his head. It's spooky, because he doesn't look angry anymore. That's the worst thing, when they're angry and you can't even tell how much. "I know you, Yen. You changed what you looked like, not who you are," he tells her.

"Oh," Yennefer says. So he won't kill her at all. "You knew already."

"Yes."

"That's why Jaskier said it was because you liked fucking a monster."

She wonders how long it'll be until she has another chance at a knife. She wonders how much it'll hurt first.

"You're not a monster," the witcher says. "Yennefer, I…" And then he's quiet for a bit. "I wish you'd told me more. That I could tell you something to convince you now. I don't even know when this is for you. This is before Aretuza, isn't it? What happened? What was the last thing?"

"I was in the barn," she tells him.

"Did something happen there?" the witcher insists, like somehow he knows already.

Another thing to hate him for, if it's true. If he already knows and he just wants to make her say it.

She confesses, "I did something I shouldn't have. And I wanted to get away." She'd thought she didn't remember whatever they'd done to her. And she'd thought, stupid as anything, that was as bad as it could be.

The witcher smiles a little at this and she hates him more. "You're good at portals," he says. "You got away."

She hugs her knees. She doesn't know if she quite believes it, but she doesn't quite know what's worse then, that it's the truth or that someone would pick that as the lie. "What a useless power. I should have stayed. They wouldn't have killed me." If it was magic, then maybe she deserves all this for being dumb enough to want that, like everywhere else she could be wasn't worse. Maybe that's why it could happen to her.

She should have stayed put. And - and even if they'd killed her by accident, they'd have been sorry about it probably, and at least her family would know she was dead, instead of her just disappearing. Now she'll end up dead and rotting on the ground in the middle of nowhere, like Jaskier kept saying, and no one will remember she was ever alive at all.

If she's sorry enough, if she's learned her lesson, will it undo whatever she did, send her back -

Of Vengerburg, he said.

"Useless," she says again. "Where could I ever go? I can't do anything right, can I? Not even magic. I can't even go home now. B-because you know. You'd just find me."

"Yennefer...it's not when you think it is. The pogrom you remember was before Jaskier was born and I'm not a hero of it. That song of his was a pile of lies written to impress humans half a century later, ones who'd forgot there'd ever been their Great Cleansing. The lute was a gift. One they may have regretted giving him, but which they did freely give him."

She doesn't know why he's bothering to say stuff like that. If he knows her then he should know that even if she was that stupid, she can't tell him anything. She doesn't know anywhere but her own home, doesn't know anybody but humans.

"Yen…" He settles down on the ground. "You won't remember her either, but I can contact a sorceress friend of yours. Let her know I found you. She could help. Would you want that? Someone else? Would you believe her?"

Witches take girls. But if she became one, if they didn’t kill her, then... If the sorceress is looking for her, and really sent him to only find her… Witchers have to do what mages tell them, or she thinks they do. Maybe… "Does she know already. A-about me."

The witcher hesitates. Of course not. Of course nothing would go right. "I...believe so, but I don't know for sure," he admits. "I don't think you were keeping it a secret from people, but you and I...we didn't talk about a lot of things." Jaskier makes a weird sound, like there's something funny about that. "But she wouldn't think anything of it, I can promise you that."

"Ha," Yennefer tells him.

"I know. Hard to believe. But I'm not human at all," the witcher points out, "and she didn't care about that. Didn't even understand how it mattered."

"Being a witcher is different. That's - they wanted you. You're useful."

"Less than you'd think," he says, smiling. "Especially these days. No, witchers and mages don't work together much. We disagree. We can disagree, Yennefer. Or else I wouldn't be able to ask if you want to see Triss, would I? I'd already be doing what she told me."

She considers that. She looks to Jaskier, who does not look happy about this at all, and that makes her feel a little better. And maybe he lied when he talked about Triss too. " _You promise_ she doesn't care."

"Yes."

"What happens if you're wrong."

"Well," the witcher says, "then she and I will disagree. Who do you suppose wins a fight, between a witcher and a mage?"


	11. Chapter 11

The witch who eventually appears is impossibly beautiful, just like people say. It's why you should never trust women who look like that. Only, they're saying Yennefer's the same kind of thing, so maybe that isn't true for her.

The stranger's face lights up with recognition. "Yennefer! Oh, Yennefer. You're so…" Twisted. Crooked. Wrong. She knows. "You're so _small_."

And the witch clutches at her suddenly. It's disconcerting and Yennefer wishes she'd stop touching her but it doesn't seem likely saying that will change anything, so she just says, "You knew me?"

The woman mercifully pulls back at the question and nods. One hand stays on Yennefer's left shoulder. "I'm Triss Merigold. We're friends."

If she recognized Yennefer, then...but that didn't prove they were real friends, did it? Jaskier said she'd scared the others, and, and if they were just her friends because she could hurt them, then if they learned she couldn't anymore, that she didn't even know how to do magic…

She looks at Geralt. He'd been fussing with the horse, doing whatever it is people have to do to keep horses from dying under them, but he's stopped that now to watch Triss and he, he's not happy about her being there, Geralt was the one who told the woman to come here but maybe Yennefer's got it all wrong and witchers and mages don't like each other at all.

It's a small relief. She doesn't know what a witch does to you but if Geralt doesn't like Triss then maybe he won't let Triss do it just to deny her something she wants.

Yennefer takes a breath and forces herself to say, "If we were really friends, then, d-do you know the reason I'm, did I tell you who my real father was, w-why I'm, why my spine's twisted."

"Oh, Yennefer," the woman says again. "Is that what you thought? Children are just born like that sometimes, it didn't happen because you've got elven blood." And before Yennefer can think anything of that, the woman continues, "Everybody knows," and the air freezes in Yennefer's lungs.

"The Brotherhood of Sorcerers knows, she means," Geralt says.

Jaskier squawks, "Wait, that's it? _That's_ what you were hedging around, Geralt? Why didn't you just say so? I thought it was, you know, something like that she was half lamia or siren or something!"

Triss seems thrown by that, glancing at Jaskier for a moment like he's the one who's some strange and impossible thing, then shakes her head and looks back to Yennefer again. "You see, what happened was you were supposed to go to court at Aedirn once you ascended. But right before the ceremony they decided to send you to an assignment somewhere else instead. One of the other sorcerers, he wanted his niece there, so at the last minute he suggested that they could use Aedirn's mage to make inroads on Cintra, as if, and everyone knows Cintra's just awful, so _of course_ they should pick someone with the right pedigree..." she says with a cheer that turns Yennefer's stomach. "So you know." Triss waves the hand not still on Yennefer's crooked shoulder like Yennefer's supposed to know what that means. "Politics."

"Oh fuck me," Jaskier says.

"They told you they had to change the assignments because you were a quarter elf and you were furious! You pretended you were really sad, so sad you couldn't even go to the ceremony, and while none of them suspected anything, you snuck down for the enchantment and showed up at the party and you charmed the king you wanted into picking you instead," Triss finishes breathlessly.

"I what."

"You were amazing!" Triss insists. "No one was ever that brave, you're supposed to just go where the Brotherhood tells you to go but you decided what you wanted and you got it for yourself! And _nobody_ was supposed to talk about it at all but _everybody_ did. You're the reason I stood up to them about going to Temeria."

She'd gone back home eventually, then. They hadn't wanted her to, but somehow she had anyway.

Yennefer looks at Geralt again. He still looks angry but no one else seems to care he's angry, and Yennefer doesn't know what that means. He says, "Can you tell what happened to her?"

"I didn't see the whole thing through," Triss says. "I heard she moved fire, but - did you have any burns, Yennefer?"

She shakes her head. "N-nothing."

"Other injuries? Bleeding?"

"No."

"Hm," Triss says, biting at her lip. "You did...you did a lot more than I thought was possible. Mages have come apart entirely from less. And now whatever this is... I've never seen anything like it. I'm not sure how to undo it myself. And I don't know if it would be safe to, if maybe you did this to yourself on purpose."

"You think… I did?" Yennefer manages. "I, why would, I crippled myself again? Made myself helpless?"

"Better than dying," Triss claims with a strange confidence. "If you did this to avoid being consumed, breaking it would put you back where you started. Maybe you're supposed to recover first."

Geralt shakes his head. "If that was her plan, she overshot. It sounds like she's from the moment before she connected with Chaos. She made a portal then, didn't she?"

Triss nods to herself. "She is terribly good at portals," Triss says. "Puts the rest of us to shame. So that would make sense." Then Triss doesn't know for sure either. Did whoever Yennefer becomes think what happened was more of a secret than her blood? Or, she isn't the one who told Triss that either, did she?

Yennefer supposes she's in no position to argue about what qualifies someone as a friend.

"But you don't need to worry, once we're back at Aretuza it'll be fine. If it's that you used too much magic, we have stores there."

"She's not going to Aretuza."

"Excuse me?" Triss says. The hand tightens on Yennefer's shoulder.

Geralt repeats, "She's not going. And she's not getting near your pool."

"I'm not going to - to throw her in! What do you take me for? She's an ascended sorceress. And a _hero_ ," Triss says.

"She was."

"She _is_ , she's still Yennefer. She's one of us."

"She left."

"She came back!" Triss shouts. "I'm not going to let you just take her, not when she just finally came back. You don't have any right to decide -"

"Would she even want this fixed?" Geralt says.

"Would she - look at her!" Yennefer flinches. "She can't remember anything, she can't protect herself, she needs help."

"She was chasing a way to undo things," Geralt says. "What if she wouldn't want someone to reverse this?"

"Of course she would want to reverse losing sixty years of her life!" Triss is furious now, and she hasn't let go of Yennefer, and they're arguing because of Yennefer. "You - you don't understand her in the least, do you? Yennefer's just the sort of person who'll do something just because everyone else says it's impossible. Because she wants to prove she's better than the rest of the Brotherhood, that she can do something they can't. It's not like she really cares that much we're made sterile, _you_ know full well that's hardly an impediment. It's a challenge, that's all, she'd never accept hurting herself to accomplish it."

"Uh," Jaskier says. "Um. How much do you know about the djinn thing?"

"That it did not make him suddenly aware of her every thought!" Triss says. "If he was, he'd realize how ridiculous he's being. Yennefer's just, she's passionate. That doesn't mean she'd ever want _this_."

Geralt retorts, "You don't know that -"

"Oh, because you know her so well? Or is this about what you want?"

"- and you don't know if you can reverse it, do you?" Geralt continues. "What happens then? You lock her up with the rest of Aretuza's new students?"

" _It's not like that._ And leaving her with you, are you going to try to tell me that's what she wants instead? Did you really expect me to come here only to agree to abandon her to some lonely mountain keep with your child surprise?"

"This isn't about what I want."

"She's not _yours_."

"That doesn't mean she belongs to you."

"When I mentioned I'd met you, she didn't have anything nice to say, you know. She said witchers would only disappoint people, told me to be wary of all of you."

Is he mad at Triss or mad at Yennefer for that, if he's more mad at Yennefer than Triss will he let Triss do whatever she wants to Yennefer?

And Triss continues confidently, like she can't see any of the fury now written across the witcher's face, "Yennefer's going to Aretuza with me. She'll be safe there, and we can figure out what went wrong and undo it and get her back."

"I. I want to go home," she tells them.

Triss turns to Yennefer again, suddenly pretending she's not mad like Yennefer's going to forget what just happened. "Aretuza is your home," Triss says. "Yennefer, you don't remember, but -"

"It's been how many years since she was there?" Geralt growls.

"I told you, _she came back_."

"I want to go home," Yennefer repeats. It's stupid stupid stupid they're not going to listen to her but it's all she wants. "I want my family."

Triss looks appalled. "Yennefer, you don't, they were awful."

Yennefer shakes her head.

"They were awful people who sold you to us."

"People who bought her," Geralt snaps.

"Saved her! They wanted her gone, they sold her for almost _nothing_ , who knows what'd have happened if she'd stayed with them any longer!"

They didn't, Yennefer tries to say. The words lodge like rocks in her throat and she thinks she might choke before she ever manages to speak again. She looks at Geralt, and he's so angry, and she doesn't know if it's at her or at Triss and he doesn't say it's not true but they didn't, she knows they didn't.

Geralt retorts, "Unlike Aretuza."

"Guys?" Jaskier calls. "I don't think, you shouldn't -"

"Such a pleasant place it is," Gestalt says over him.

"- maybe this isn't the best time to -"

Triss ignores Jaskier to shout at Geralt, "Yes! It was! With a room and a bed instead of being kept with the pigs like she was some animal! With people who cared if she lived or died! It's - not everyone ascends, yes, some of them, some of them… But none of us even know about that until after well it's all been done, it's nothing anyone has to be scared of by the time you find out and Yennefer was Tissaia's favorite from the start, everyone knows that, she never had anything to worry about, she was happy there!"

Her parents didn't sell her. They wouldn't.

"She tried to kill herself there!"

"No, that was before -"

Geralt shakes his head, growls, "Look at her wrists if you won't believe me."

"They didn't!" tears loose from her throat. "You're lying they didn't sell me to you they wouldn't do that!"

"Yennefer…" Triss says.

"M-my mother warned me about witches, she would never have said that if she was just, if she was going to - "

"They _did_."

"Triss, I really don't think this is a good idea!" Jaskier shouts.

Yennefer demands, "How much then? If it's true then how much do I cost?"

But Triss doesn't even hesitate. "Less than one of your father's pigs."

She wants her mother.

"Tissaia said she asked him how much one was and then she asked how much for you and that's what he said."

She wants her mother.

"And then she offered even less and he still agreed."

_She wants her mother._

"Because they were horrible, horrible people and you don't owe them anything, you never did."

_She wants her mother she wants her mother she wants her mother she_ **_wants_ ** _-_

It's bright.

It's bright because the trees are gone.

She's on the side of a road by a fence.

She doesn't recognize anything.


	12. Chapter 12

She can do magic after all. What they said was true.

She walks along the road, and she's too scared to speak to any of the people, and she tries to tell herself she just doesn't know where she is, that the bits and pieces she thinks look familiar are because she's never been lots of places and maybe they all look similar.

She keeps telling herself that until she comes to the river. Because she's in Vengerberg. She's in Vengerberg and her family isn't here.

She sits down and cries.

That's - that's the good thing about being by yourself all the time, no one cares if you want to cry about things.

She lied that her mother was dead. She lied because she didn't want her mother to die, because she didn't want her mother to die because of her, and now her mother's dead. And she's sick now at the thought somehow it was saying that that made it happen, that if only she hadn't said it, it wouldn't have turned out to be true, and there's a clutching begging in her chest that maybe it doesn't have to be, that this is so impossible maybe there can be another impossibility, maybe it can go back to how it's supposed to be if she just, if she just…

But it won't. Even if there's some way it's possible it'd never work for her. She only ever does the wrong thing.

"Useless," she mumbles. She doesn't know why everyone is so afraid of her as an adult when even having magic only means she gets to go from one bad place to another bad place. There's nowhere in the world she wants to be now. Nowhere in the world that wants her.

Not that...not that there ever was, really. Even her family didn't want her. She'd wanted them.

 _Almost_ nothing means she was worth something, she supposes.

But not nearly as much as she'd cost them, not when they’d kept her longer than any of the pigs.

Maybe it's a good thing, being in the future. Because she'd go back to them if she could, and this way she hasn't got the choice, so she's doing right by them for once in her life.

She stares at the river and wonders if it'd have been better if her mother had drowned her. Why didn't she? Yennefer tried so hard not to be trouble but she knows she was. Just a useless mouth eating their food and getting in the way. And it's not like anybody else would've cared, it's not like anyone else would have stopped her. It's not like Yennefer could've stopped her.

Yennefer's seen it with the pigs. Every time there's always some piglets that end up smothered or savaged, the runts or, or just there was something wrong and the mother knew, they can tell, it's not sad, there was something wrong with them.

Why'd her mother even go all the way to Vengerberg, she only had to do that because of Yennefer, because nobody there knew what Yennefer was, maybe she's stupid but she's not that stupid, she knows it's her fault. If her mother was going to get rid of Yennefer why did she wait so long? Why did she keep her and bring her food and say she loved her if - why would her mother lie, nobody was making her lie so why did she lie?

Why is Yennefer alive?

Yennefer could fix that now, only, this is the upstream side. She's supposed to make sure to walk all the way downstream of Vengerberg first or else she'd be polluting the water, she was told that clearly enough when people felt like talking to her, and she doesn't want to get up.

They arrive again while Yennefer is trying to decide if she cares about the inconvenience her body would be to everyone else.

There's a brief argument when they see her. The whole thing is conducted far enough away Yennefer can't make out the words, just that it's half-muffled angry snarling at each other. The witcher wins it, it seems, maybe because the sorceress looks already exhausted for some reason or maybe just because witchers can kill mages like he said, and he approaches and sits next to her.

She asks his opinion on the issue of the river. She's been nothing but trouble for everyone already, she admits, but it's so hard for her to walk all that way. It hurts already from walking this far. And she knows that it's not anybody's fault but hers that she's worse at everything but she just, she feels like it should matter a little. And she doesn't know why she has to care about causing problems for other people when no one cares about her, when her own family -

"What she _said -_ " Her voice breaks. She swallows. "It's true, isn't it?"

"It's the story Triss heard. You and Tissaia are the only ones who were there for it," he says.

So maybe… But it doesn't matter, does it? She cares so much and it doesn't matter at all. How stupid. She just wants the answer to be different, even though it wouldn't change anything.

Even if what Triss said is true, even if they got rid of her, she'd still go back if she could. She loves them.

"I made everyone mad at me going home and… I'd still have only been me, it's not like they'd even want to see me again." Although, she realizes… "Your friend didn't recognize me, so I guess they wouldn't have to see _me_. Maybe I said I was somebody else. Maybe they liked her. Triss said even the king liked her. Did people like her?"

"Yes."

Well, she would have looked like Triss. That could make people like you, couldn't it? Yennefer supposes it's not impossible.

It doesn't sound like it was worth anything, which is easier for Yennefer to believe. There's so much wrong with Yennefer, probably more wrong than even magic could ever fix. Being pretty only means people won't be mad at her about being made to look at something ugly. It doesn't mean anyone _cares_. The only ones who ever cared - and they didn't, after all. Because they sold her to witches. Sold her to a witch who didn't even want her enough to agree to the few marks they'd asked for, one who had to haggle the price down even further before it was something she was willing to pay.

 _Your own family doesn't even want you_ , the girl had said as she'd held Yennefer down. So how could anyone else?

Magic wouldn't change that.

"I hated being a sorceress, didn't I?"

"What you hated," he says slowly, "was that you weren't given a choice. That's what you told me."

She wonders why she'd do that. "Nobody gives me a choice. I only get to decide anything when nobody cares enough to notice,” she points out. “And if they do they take that away too. That's how it works. You took the knife away," she adds.

"I did."

"And you wouldn't let me get to the river, would you?"

"Is that what you want?"

How is she supposed to know? She says, "What did the Yennefer you knew want?"

"To matter."

"Hm." That's… "I - I did, didn't I? People say I won an important battle for them."

He nods. "That and more."

"But you think I did this to myself."

"I don't think you intended to do this," he says after a moment.

"You think I wanted this."

He's silent for a bit. Then he says, "The magic they used to reshape you required a sacrifice. I don't understand exactly why what you lost then came to mean so much to you, but the last time we met you were risking your life chasing false rumors about dragon hearts, all to get back what you'd had to pay for it. What's happened here isn't something I think you would have accepted as a fair trade." He smiles oddly, adds, "I don't know if you were interested in any further trade, for that matter, fair or not. You were sick of paying for things. But however this happened to you, it happened. What I fear is that you would be angry to return and discover the choice taken away from you once again. But preventing that from happening… That's a choice as well, and has its own price. I don't know what you'd want."

"Maybe I'd be mad at you either way," Yennefer suggests.

"Maybe. You're mad at me already."

She stares out at the muddy water. "So I hate you too, then." She probably hates all of them.

He sighs. "You were going to die, Yen. "

"You don't have to talk to me first," she points out. "I can't do anything. You can pick whatever you want."

"I don't want to pick."

She laughs at him. Then, finding herself unable to speak, she gestures violently at the river. She doesn't even get to pick that! She has to wait for somebody else to decide to kill her or not. She ran away twice from him and he's still here. The last week has made it clear the only kind of things Yennefer gets to pick are if she goes without a fuss or if she gets dragged by a rope around her wrists, if she stays put when told or if she gets her ankles tied together. Everyone else decides what happens to her and it doesn't matter what she wants because that's what they want. She knows it's what they want because it's all that ever happens.

"I don't," Geralt repeats. "And I had hoped Triss might be able to… I thought it might be possible to avoid the decision. But there's no way to restore just your memories. That much Triss is sure of. Only undoing the whole of this will change that. Until then, neither myself nor Triss know what you would have wanted. But you are her. What do you want?"

She wants her family. She wants to not be a burden, not to be useless, not to be cursed. She wants people not to hurt her.

She wants to matter.

"I cut my wrists," Yennefer says. "After I go to become a sorceress. Why?"

He says, "You didn't tell me. When I saw them I assumed it was before, the same way Triss did. She was close to you in age so if she didn't know, it must have been early on, in the first year or so."

Because she was trapped there, Yennefer assumes. And she stayed trapped.

"I'll hate you, and I'll hate Aretuza," Yennefer says. "I think I hate Vengerberg too. I don't know. I don't know how I can know. Do I hate Triss too and she just thinks she's my friend?"

"If you hated her, she'd know."

Yennefer twists to look at Triss, who even keeping her distance looks about to explode from the strain of not speaking up. She scowls and then pointedly turns back to the river. "Maybe she _does_ and she's _lying_ ," Yennefer says spitefully, loud enough that she's sure Triss can hear.

"She's terrible at things like that."

It's true that if it were Yennefer in Triss's position, she'd have probably lied a bunch already. She's pretty sure that if Triss had only said she knew about the spell and what to do, Yennefer would be at Aretuza right now. That would've been the smarter thing to do than argue with a witcher that she just didn't want to do what he wanted. Maybe she could've said the spell would leave her dead if it wasn't reversed, since Yennefer knows that matters more to everybody than what Yennefer wants.

Yennefer hugs her knees. "So she really means it when she says that she thinks I should go with her."

"She does."

"And you think I shouldn't."

"I don't know."

"But if I go there, I can't come back."

"If it's reversed, you'd be able to leave again. Because they'd let you, and because they wouldn't be able to stop you. If not... I…" He sighs, then continues grudgingly, "I think you can trust that Triss will do everything in her power to undo this. She cares about you, and she can be quite determined. If this can be reversed, she won't stop until it's done, even if everyone else there disagrees."

"I can trust her to do that but I can't trust her to let me go."

"It might be that you could convince her," Geralt says, though he sounds dubious. "I don't know her particularly well. But Triss wouldn't be making the decision at that point. She isn't in charge of Aretuza."

"Who is?"

"Tissaia."

Yennefer shivers.

"You had the chance to kill Tissaia at the battle and you didn't," Geralt says. "If that helps."

"Sixty years and I'm still a coward! How does that help!"

"You're not. I've seen you kill people.”

"Probably not witches," Yennefer mutters. Killing people who can't fight back isn't the same thing as killing people who can. There's nothing special about managing the first one. It happens all the time.

"You spared her," he insists. "You could have killed her without anyone realizing. Triss says Tissaia had gone off on her own to try to deal with one of the Nilfgaard mages, and whatever happened there, it left her nearly dead. You were the only one who knew she'd survived. And then she asked you to burn the area with her still in the middle of it, and no one would've questioned her dying from that either. From how Triss tells it, there shouldn't even have been bones left. But, contrary to what everyone thought was possible, Tissaia was untouched. What happened was entirely your choice."

"And why'd I do that?" she demands. "Why would I ever do that?"

"Well," Geralt leans closer and then continues in a conspiratorial whisper, " _Triss_ explained it's because Tissaia is a wonderful person who you all love deeply."

"So nobody knows that either."

"You'd have to ask yourself," he agrees.

"And you don't know if they can fix me. So it might not be possible, even with magic."

"It might."

"Maybe she told me to kill her," Yennefer says. Tissaia, it sounds like, is most likely the one who didn't care when Yennefer wanted that. "That'd be fair." Then she realizes and says, "And because I didn't, she's still there, and, and -" She bangs her hand against the dirt in frustration. "I can't get anything right!"

He hums noncommittally. "What do you want?"

"I…" She knows she doesn't really get a say in this. But… "I want to help people instead of needing help. I want not to be powerless. I want…" The fact all she's done is get lost stings, and she wonders if the reason both Geralt and Triss had to guess it was her first magic is because no matter how much time passes she thinks she might always be ashamed hers wasn't anything better, like Triss' must've been. "I want real magic that's good for anything instead of stupid portals."

The answer is no. Triss wanted to take her and he wanted her not to go and he won that fight already. But he doesn't say no and she looks at him and he doesn't look angry, not even a little. He just looks relieved.

"All right," he tells her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well.
> 
> The original sketch for this was to finish around the events of Ch9 and meeting with Geralt, as the ostensible plot is needing to find out who Yennefer is/that she's been kiddified by magic, at which point it can be fixed. But the actual backbone of the story is Yennefer's feelings, and given I'd managed to find a way for her to have an even worse week than this went in canon, I wanted to try to bring that toward some sort of resolution where she ends in at least a little better of a place than she starts.
> 
> I had a lot of fun with this, as well as talking to people about different combinations (young Yennefer meeting Ciri, destiny entanglement meaning the same thing happens to Geralt, etc) so I might come back to this concept once we know more about the characters from S2.

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate any and all sorts of comments. I think of writing as like a conversation and I welcome hearing people's thoughts whether they're positive or negative. Say literally whatever you feel like.


End file.
